Trial starts for wife who killed Navy doctor

San Diego  The wife of a Navy doctor knew her husband was having an affair, waited for him to take a sleeping pill one morning in December 2010 and then repeatedly plunged a knife into his body, a prosecutor said Monday.

Jennifer Trayers, accused of stabbing to death her husband, cried Monday in San Diego Superior Court as her trial began. Prosecutors say the killing of Lt. Cmdr. Frederick John Trayers III, a Navy doctor, was first-degree murder. Her lawyer says it was voluntary manslaughter. — Peggy Peattie

Jennifer Trayers, accused of stabbing to death her husband, cried Monday in San Diego Superior Court as her trial began. Prosecutors say the killing of Lt. Cmdr. Frederick John Trayers III, a Navy doctor, was first-degree murder. Her lawyer says it was voluntary manslaughter.
— Peggy Peattie

Jennifer Trayers, 43, is on trial in the stabbing death of Lt. Cmdr. Frederick Trayers III, 41, whose body was found lying on a bedroom floor in the couple’s North Park condominium. The defendant also was found in the room, bleeding from apparently self-inflicted knife wounds to her chest and abdomen.

“She waited for him to be at his most vulnerable,” Deputy District Attorney Fiona Khalil told a San Diego Superior Court jury, adding that the medication made the doctor groggy and slow to react that morning after working an overnight shift.

Khalil said Trayers then aimed the knife at her husband’s chest, piercing his heart and a lung. There were eight stab wounds on his back.

Kerry Armstrong, Trayers’ lawyer, argued that his client may be guilty of manslaughter, but not murder. He conceded that she inflicted the fatal wounds to her husband on Dec. 4, 2010, but that the stabbing was the culmination of a 90-day “emotional roller coaster” that involved Trayers learning that her husband was again romantically involved with another woman.

He had an affair with a different woman years earlier when the couple lived in Florida, Armstrong said.

He told the jury that Trayers will testify she planned to kill herself — not her husband — when she grabbed a kitchen knife and asked him how to slit her wrists. A struggle ensued after Frederick Trayers told her she would need something sharper and handed her a “military-type” knife, which she used to make several dozen marks on her chest.

Moments later, the husband reached out and grabbed the weapon, the defense lawyer said.

“She will tell you that at this point she took the knife over from Mr. Trayers and just started stabbing,” Armstrong said. “Within seconds, she was on the other side of the bed. She was soaked in blood.”

If convicted of first-degree murder and a knife-use allegation, Trayers faces a sentence of 25 years to life. A conviction for voluntary manslaughter, plus the knife allegation, carries a possible 12-year sentence.

San Diego police, who had been called to the couple’s condo on Grim Avenue, found Frederick Trayers’ body on Dec. 6, 2010, lying in a fetal position next to the bed. Co-workers had contacted police when the usually punctual doctor, a resident in emergency medicine, failed to show up for work at Balboa Naval Medical Center.

Khalil told the jury that Jennifer Trayers, who had also been unfaithful in the past, collected evidence of her husband’s affair for months and sent the other woman an eight-page email telling her: “My husband is not going to be yours.”

She then waited for the opportunity to kill her husband before trying to kill herself, the prosecutor said.